Day 200 - 12 Dec 95 - Page 16

     
     1        Lordship might, in fact, be functus officio, so far as this
     2        is concerned, since it is a finding of fact in the case but
     3        I do not really want to have argue that.
     4
     5   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I am very disinclined to either rewrite, not
     6        only rewrite it, but offer any further comment whatsoever,
     7        until I give judgment on the ramifications of it.
     8
     9   MR. RAMPTON:  Quite.  If that be right, my Lord -- we
    10        respectively agree that it is right -- then it is, as
    11        I say, descriptive of the inherent quality of the food.
    12        But regardless of what else the person eats during the
    13        course of the day or a week or a month, and if it had been
    14        otherwise, as I say, it is doubtful whether it would have
    15        been defamatory at all to say:  "Well, you should not eat
    16        too many carrots because if you do so and nothing else, it
    17        may damage your health" is hardly defamatory of the
    18        greengrocer at all.
    19
    20        The reason that I emphasise that point is because of what
         your Lordship says further down the same page at letter F
    22        where you said:  "In my judgment, both an allegation that
    23        the Plaintiffs sell food which they know to be very
    24        unhealthy and an allegation", and so on and so forth down
    25        to the semicolon, "and both claims are so serious that they
    26        would separately" -- I emphasise the word "separately" --
    27         "and together tend to lower the Plaintiffs in the
    28        estimation of right-thinking members of society generally
    29        and tend to affect them adversely in the estimation of
    30        reasonable people generally".
    31
    32        My Lord, to take the carrot example, it simply would not be
    33        so that people would think ill or seriously ill of the
    34        greengrocer simply because somebody had said:  "Do not eat
    35        too many carrots; be careful to eat other things as well".
    36
    37   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Might it not be relevant to justification of
    38        the second part, as you have categorised it, if you were,
    39        for the purpose of me posing the question, right that one
    40        should read in "because eating it other than occasionally
         may well make your diet high in fat", would not the
    42        Defendants be entitled to justify that by saying:  "If you
    43        eat it once a week you may well make your diet high in fat"
    44        etc.?
    45
    46   MR. RAMPTON:  That depends upon what the word "occasionally"
    47        means but, with respect, "occasionally" is a simple,
    48        English word which is what one should find in natural,
    49        ordinary meanings anyway.  "Occasional" means once every so
    50        often. 
    51 
    52   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  I am very disinclined -- I know this is 
    53        designed to be helpful, Mr. Rampton -- to get bogged down
    54        in it.  I am certainly not going to say that
    55        Mr. Fairgrieve, having given evidence-in-chief and been
    56        cross-examined some way along the line, as I recall, should
    57        not be recalled for further cross-examination if the
    58        Defendants wish.
    59
    60   MR. RAMPTON:  My Lord, very well.  I will just add this, if that